


but there is a cure in the house

by nevernevergirl



Category: Runaways (Comics), Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, F/M, Season 3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-09-27 12:56:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20408101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: “We just came up with a plan, Molls. Alex is going to hack as much as he can with Leslie’s help, we’ll use Xavin to decode anything alien, and once we have a lead, we’ll make a move. We’re not going in blind again.”Nico doesn’t say it’s too risky, or we can’t lose anyone else, or there aren’t enough of us. That would be repetitive, and dumb, and obvious and she’s not sure she can actually form the words right now, anyway.Season 3 spec fic.





	1. oh, the torment bred in race

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my attempt at covering the first few episodes of s3/getting the kids back together? I have a huge chunk of this written and all of it outlined, and I thought I'd go ahead and start posting it to sort of kick my own ass into getting it up before we start getting promo for s3, because otherwise I'll be tempted to change it with new information, haha. I started this in January, so it's probably not going to be totally compliant with the little bit of info we have, but I'm trying my best emotionally lmao. am also going to try my best to update weekly with this!

When Gert was nine years old, her parents got on this kick about the Great American Road Trip, and planned their next, like, five family vacations around the most famous routes in the country. They only managed to do the Pacific Coast Highway before that dream got scrapped; somewhere between seven-year-old Molly spending an hour asking _ why _ they were flying to Washington just to take a rental car to San Diego and Gert going through their entire stock of kids’ dramamine in the first two days, the Yorkes realized maybe Kerouac-ing it up with two elementary schoolers wasn’t a great idea.

Gert had actually been kind of upset about it at the time. She’d spent hours going over maps with Dad and itineraries with Mom. The consolation trip to Mexico over winter break helped, but her and her dad had been sort of planning to do a reverse Route 66 situation the summer after she graduated high school. It was kind of dumb and dorky, probably, but sometimes, when she was procrastinating her chemistry homework, she’d look up kitschy road stops and send them to Dad, and she _ knows _ he has screenshots saved on his phone for reference.

She’d really been looking forward to it, before she found out her parents were genocidal maniacs. 

This, though? This isn’t a road trip. This is hell on Earth, complete with a soundtrack entirely comprised of live Phish and Grateful Dead albums.

“Are you hungry, sweetie? We can’t stop for anything, obviously—”

“Because you’re kidnapping me.”

“—but I do have bran bars up here. And those veggie chips from Trader Joe’s, you love those.”

“No thanks. I hear truth serum has a gnarly aftertaste.”

“Okay, well. Technically, it was an inhibitor targeting the cerebral cortex, not truth serum.”

“You do know that doesn’t make it any better, right?”

Dale sighs. Gert crosses her arms. Old Lace snorts.

It’s been about a day and a half. Gert had spent the first few hours panicking, which had especially sucked with Dale gently reminding her about the Toolbox of Coping Mechanisms her therapist had given her. He’d brought her meds, too. But Gert’s pretty sure that she’d be panicking even without a diagnosed anxiety disorder. Panic’s gotta be stage one of Being Kidnapped By Your Murderous Father, right?

Gert shifts as much as she can, pushing herself up enough to see out the window. She’s not totally sure where they are, because Dale’s been sticking to back roads ever since she came to. Somewhere after her second panic attack, it occurred to her that she should probably start making note of landmarks, but she had no clue how far out they’d gone, or in what direction. Not that it mattered if she couldn’t get to a phone. Not that it mattered if the rest of her friends had been taken by their parents, too. 

“I have to pee,” she announces. There’s a rest stop just close enough for her to make out. Well. She’s pretty sure it’s a rest stop, given that her glasses are still broken. 

Dale hesitates. Gert groaned. 

“You can stand outside again,” she rolled her eyes. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, it’s not like I’d get anywhere.”

Trying to find an escape had been stage two. There’s a broken window in a McDonald’s about half a day’s drive away that’s proof it didn’t go well. 

“We’ll stop at the next one,” he tries.

“Dale. I swear I will piss in this car if you don’t pull over right. Now.”

“Gertrude!”

“I’ll tell _ Lace _ she can piss in the car.”

Stage three: begrudging acceptance. Also, making Dale’s life as hellish as hers. Not that she could even come _ close_. 

He pulls into the parking lot, which is really just enough gravel for maybe three cars. They’re the only ones there besides the bored girl watching something on her phone at the cash register, so no one notices the dinosaur, or Dale shoving a beanie over her hair as he gets her out of the back seat. 

Dale pays for a pack of gum so the girl will hand over the bathroom key and escorts her back. It’s a single stall, no bathroom. She’s not that surprised; she really didn’t have an escape plan. 

But also, she doesn’t have to pee. 

She grabs the roll of toilet paper and yanks it off of the holder, throwing it hard against the wall. Next, the roll of paper towels. There’s not much else in the room unless she wants to commit actual property damage, and this is probably a small business that doesn’t deserve it, so she yanks off her shoes and throws them. And then she picks them up and throws them again. And again. And again. 

She takes a deep breath, and she lets out a scream.

“Gert?” Dale’s voice is frantic. Good. She doubts the cashier heard her all the way back here, behind the door and over her Youtube video, but making him panic is a plus. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

She snorts and rolls her eyes as she leans against the wall, slumping down. The floor’s kind of gross, but she’s been living in a moldy underground mansion for going on two months, and also, she’s kidnapped, and doesn’t really care about that kind of shit right now. 

Gert closes her eyes, gives herself a moment.

And then she sobs.

Fat warm tears roll down her cheeks, and she lets it fully take over. Her shoulders come up and her chest heaves and she’s gasping, and it feels good. There’s snot on her face and the mascara she put on three days ago mixes in with it.

She cries and she cries and she cries because she’s never going on a roadtrip with her dad. She never even _ had _ the dad she thought she wanted to go on a roadtrip with it. It isn’t fair, and she doesn’t know how to miss something she didn’t actually have, so she cries.

She’s not sure how long she sits there, becoming a heap of salt and snot and catharsis, but eventually Dale raps his knuckles gently, nervously, against the door.

“Give me a minute,” she snaps.

“Sweetheart—”

“I _ said _ give me a fucking minute, _ Dad_.” 

She hopes it sounds like a knife. He shuts up, so she thinks maybe it made a cut. 

She grabs a piece of paper towel and wipes her face, just a little. She glances in the mirror, and her eyes are still red. Maybe it’ll raise a red flag, if the cashier happens to look up. Or maybe it’ll just make Dale feel bad. If he’s still capable of that. 

She stands and goes to clean up her mess. Her problems aren’t some girl making minimum wage’s fault, right? 

“I need you to tell me what you know about Nico’s staff.”

Xavin turns looks up from their spot at the dining room table, a half-eaten strawberry Pop Tart in hand and crumbs on their lips. Alex waits impatiently as they swallow.

“Which one is Nico?” Xavin asks, drawing the name out slow and careful.

Alex sighs, crossing his arms. He really, really doesn’t have time for this. 

“Alex!”

He blinks at the sound of Molly’s voice, shaking his head. Xavin’s staring at him kind of unnervingly, so it’s almost a relief when Molly grabs his arm roughly. 

“Woah, Bruiser, _ easy_.”

Molly gives him an unamused look. “We need to have a family meeting.”

“Can it wait? I was going to try hacking Pride’s servers again—”

Molly lifts him over her shoulders, so that’s probably a no.

“Molly!”

Xavin’s still staring when Molly manhandles him out of the room. Weird.

Karolina closes her eyes and tilts her head toward the sky, closing her eyes as she remembers.

_ “I love you,” _ Nico had said. Her voice had kind of shaken, and she’d held onto Karolina’s hands too tightly, but she didn’t cry, because Nico always thought she had to be the strong one. Karolina wished she’d taken the time to tell her she didn’t. She wished she’d done a lot of things differently, especially with Nico, but there hadn’t been time for that. It didn’t matter. It _ couldn’t _matter, because they were under attack, again, and they were scrambling, again, but they’d find a way out, again.

Her eyes snap open, and a chill runs through her. Slowly, she glances around the cave, taking a deep breath to try to ground herself.

That hadn’t been what happened. 

She remembers now. Nico couldn’t get the words out, because of whatever the drones were doing to her. Karolina had known what she meant, but she hadn’t said it back. She sort of hates herself for it, for not at least telling Nico that she _ knew_, but she was selfish. 

She’d wanted the first time they said it to go better than that. She didn’t want it couched in this mess, she wanted it at home, in the Treehouse, alone and slow and sweet and private. 

If they said it now, it would be because they didn’t think they’d get it later, and she’d refused to believe that.

_ Stupid._

She doesn’t know why she’s back in the cave. She knows she ran, split off from Nico in a last minute, last-ditch-effort of a plan. She doesn’t know where her friends are. She doesn’t know where the drones are either, and she’s not sure which scares her more. 

The ground starts to shake, and then everything goes black. 

When the door to the Treehouse swings open, Molly’s standing there, a stony look on her face and Alex slung over her shoulder.

Nico raises her eyebrows. Alex sighs the world’s most resigned sigh.

“We’re having a family meeting,” Molly says, dumping Alex unceremoniously on Nico’s bed.

“About how Alex can’t walk upstairs by himself?”

“_Alex _ was super close to hacking through to the external security cameras at Pride HQ,” he grumbles, and Molly rolls her eyes, flopping down next to him.

“Nothing happened _ outside _ Pride HQ,” Molly said, crossing her arms. “That doesn’t even help.”

“It’s a start! And if we can see our parents go in or out—” 

“All we saw the last time you tried was the stupid ambulance picking up Nico’s dad!”

“_Molly_,” Alex hisses. Molly ducks her head a little. 

“Sorry, Nico,” she mumbles.

Nico closes her eyes for a second, and then shakes her head. “It’s fine. I mean. It happened,” she sighs. “We just came up with a plan, Molls. Alex is going to hack as much as he can with Leslie’s help, we’ll use Xavin to decode anything alien, and once we have a lead, we’ll make a move. We’re not going in blind again.”

She doesn’t say _ it’s too risky _ or _ we can’t lose anyone else _ or _ there aren’t enough of us_. That would be repetitive and dumb and obvious and she’s not sure she can actually form the words right now, anyway.

“I know,” Molly says, impatiently. “I don’t trust them, not with this. They’re not my family. You are.”

Alex reaches out a hand over Molly’s wrist, gently, and Nico sucks in a breath.

“No fair, using my own words against me,” she mumbles. Molly gives her a grin so small and forced it hurts to look at. Nico picks up the staff.

“Keep out,” she says, in a low voice, and the door swings shut. 

“You could have just closed the door normally,” Alex says, a little frantically. “You can’t just use up spells like that.”

“You can’t tell her what to do with _ her _ staff,” Molly shoots back. 

Nico rolled her eyes. “We needed privacy. That’s going to keep them from getting in, or overhearing, or getting anywhere near this side of the house until we’re done.”

Alex raises an eyebrow. “You sound pretty confident about that.”

“I know how the staff works,” Nico snaps. The words are too sharp and come out too quickly; Alex frowns, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says, his voice careful. “Last week, with Aw—”

“Don’t even try to finish that sentence, Wilder.”

“Or what, you’ll hex me?”

“Maybe I should!”

“Guys,” Molly shouts. “Shut _ up_. How is any of this important right now?”

“I think a potentially limitless power source we don’t know Nico can _ control _ is pretty important, Molls,” Alex mutters. 

“I can control it, asshole.”

Molly crosses her arms and glares. Nico and Alex glance at each other, and Nico sighs.

“Sorry, Molly,” she says, and Alex mutters an echo. “You’re right. What’s important right now is getting Gert and Karolina back.”

She doesn’t think her voice shakes on Karolina’s name; she’s careful about that. But Alex’s face goes kind of soft, and Molly scoots next to her, curling up at her side. Nico sighs, shifting to wrap an arm around her. They’re all quiet for a moment. Nico plays with Molly’s hair, and watches Alex think. 

It’s kind of absurdly calming. 

“I think,” Alex says, finally, slowly, “I think we’re going to need a contingency plan. We’ll use Leslie and Xavin’s help, like we talked about. That can be our plan B. Plan A is something only we’ll know.”

Alex’s expression shifts to something harder, and Nico’s stomach flops. Alex always has a plan. But as insane as it feels to admit with everything they’ve been through the past couple of months, they’ve never needed a plan this desperately. 

“Okay,” she says, slowly, rubbing Molly’s arm absently. “What’s plan A?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’m working on it,” he says, and Nico resists the urge to roll her eyes. That hard look in his eyes fades, suddenly, and he slumps a little. “Look, there’s one thing we haven’t tried yet.”

Molly and Nico exchange confused looks, and Alex sighs, holding up his phone. 

“We can call Chase.”

“Excuse me?” Nico says, sitting up sharply. Molly scrambles up when she does. “Chase went home. He’s not a part of this. We all made a choice, and that was his.”

“I know, I know,” Alex says, holding his hands up. “Just hear me out, okay? Then we can vote, and majority rules. Promise.”

Nico scoffs. “Right, like majority ruled when you decided we were going after dirty cops?”

Alex tilts his head, giving her an unimpressed look. 

“Alex apologized for that,” Molly says, quickly. 

“Thank you, Molly,” Alex says, pointedly.

“Look. I’m just as pissed as you are, but I think we have to consider that Chase made a choice for himself, not the rest of us. He didn’t give us up when the Yorkes drugged him, and he didn’t give us up when he went home. He’ll want to know that some of us escaped, and I’m betting he’ll help when he finds out Gert didn’t. He can at least tell us what he knows, and we’ll go from there.”

Molly flinches a little, but nods resolutely.

“Yeah, I know,” Nico says, sighing. She does. It had hurt when he left, and she was mad. She’s still mad. He’d been stupid and naive in the woods that day, if he actually believed their parents would just turn over Pride to them, but she can believe he didn’t want them all mindwiped. Or worse. 

“Fine,” she says, quietly. “Do it.”

Alex presses Chase’s contact number and sets his phone in the middle of their circle, switching to speaker phone. Nico holds her breath. Molly stares at the phone, intently.

It rings, and it rings, and it rings, before switching to voicemail. Old Lace roars in the background of the recording. Molly doesn’t look away as Alex ends the call.

“Maybe he’s with his parents,” Molly says, her voice shaking a little. “Maybe he can’t answer.”

Nico feels weird and unsettled, but she pushes it down. She’s not ready to go there yet. 

“Everyone text him,” she says, her voice as firm as she can make it. “Right now. Tell him Gert’s missing. And keep texting him, blow up his phone. If he’s with his parents, he’ll leave when he can, we’re the only ones who have his burner number.” 

“Unless he gave it to Pride,” Alex mutters. “Or the lacrosse team.”

“Not even Chase is that stupid,” Molly says, then frowns. “I hope.”

30 texts and five minutes later, there’s still no response.

“Maybe he can’t get away,” Alex sighs. “Or maybe I was wrong about him helping.”

“No,” Molly says, sharply. “Gert was right, he’s an idiot, not a traitor. You guys saw him when Gert was sick, he wouldn’t ignore it if he knew she was missing.”

The weird and unsettling feeling comes back.

“Molly’s right,” Nico says, quietly. “He wanted us to come home, right?”

Alex sighs a little, nodding.

“Do you think he got mindwiped?” Molly asks, frantically. “He said they wouldn’t if we came home, and he went home.”

“Yeah, we’ve already established our parents are liars,” Alex mutters.

“Not _ helping_, Alex,” Nico snaps. “I don’t know, Molly. Maybe. But yeah, I think something happened.”

Molly closes her eyes and tenses up, like she’s trying to be strong, like she’s trying not to cry. Nico hates how familiar that look is on her. 

Chase hadn’t been right after all. It had been lose-lose, no matter what. She wants to at least feel vindicated about that, but it’s a shitty, worst case scenario kind of vindication, and she’d take being pissed about being wrong anyway. 

He’s not safe. They have no leads on Karolina or Gert, and another person they care about isn’t safe.

She pulls away from Molly, gently, standing up and grabbing the staff. 

“Okay. So Plan A is breaking into the Stein house.”

Selena Gomez is playing when Chase comes to.

He opens his eyes, then blinks against the light, ducking his head as he lets his vision adjust and come into focus.

He’s wearing a _ suit_. What the fuck?

Chase looks up, and it takes him a second, but he knows this place. He knows this place _ like this, _ streamers and balloons and expensive table settings.

_ When you’re ready come and get it now, _ Selena’s voice croons from end of the ballroom—where the DJ is. Or, rather, where the DJ should be; it’s just the set up underneath some absolutely sick lighting, but when Chase stops and looks, even though the room is still empty, he can _ feel it _ the way it’s supposed to happen. He’s alone, he _ knows _ he’s alone, but if he looks, _ really _ looks, it _ feels _ the way it would if it were really happening. 

It’s trippy as fuck, and it’s kind of giving him a headache.

He takes a deep breath, wandering around the room with an occasional pause to _ feel_. If he stands just so, he can see his mom talking to the caterers. His dad’s shaking hands with a Nemo board member, introducing him with a clap on his back; Chase _ remembers this. _ Alex awkwardly in the corner with a cup of punch in his hand while Amy dances like a complete nerd in front of him, trying to drag him out. Karolina and Nico twirling Molly between them. The guys from his 7th grade lacrosse team huddle together at one table. None of them are there, but he can _ feel it _ if he stops to look. 

Chase is pretty sure this _ isn’t _ how time travel works, but this is _ definitely _his bar mitzvah. 

Dazed, he wanders around, turning in circles until he trips over a chair, wincing and leaning over to rub at his shin. He stops when he does, and looks up, and remembers who was in that chair.

Gert had long brown hair that hit mid way down her back, and these wireframe glasses that were a little too big for her face, and not really on purpose yet. Her dress had sequins, and she had a too-big cardigan pulled over it that didn’t really go with formal wear. Her shoes were purple, and her face was red when she looked up at Chase and let him drag her up to dance. 

The song shifts. Selena gives way to Pink, that song with the guy from Fun. Gert and Molly used to scream-sing along to every time it came up on shuffle. 

His stomach sinks, and because he’s an absolute idiot with apparently zero self-preservation instinct, he spins around, slowly, focusing his eyes on the center of the dance floor. The feeling hits him like a truck. 

_ Chase bows exaggeratedly, offering out a hand. Gert rolls her eyes, tilting her head a little so her hair swings in front of her face, covering her blush. _

_ “You’re so stupid,” she mumbles, but she’s smiling when he looks up, so he grins, braces and all. _

_ “It’s my birthday, you have to dance with me.” _

_ “I don’t have to dance with you, I’m my own person,” she says, loftily. Chase rolls his eyes. _

_ “Fine. You don’t have to, but you should,” he shrugs. “Then I’ll owe you a dance on your birthday.” _

_ “That’s also stupid,” she says, matter-of-factly. “If I don’t want to dance now, why would I want to dance on my birthday?” _

_ “Gert,” he whines. _

_ She rolls her eyes. “Okay, fine, but I’m leading.” _

_ She grabs his hand and marches him out to the floor like she hadn’t just been complaining, pulling him into an exaggerated waltz. _

_ He laughs, stumbling. “I don’t think this is the right kind of song for that.” _

_ “Beggars can’t be choosers, Chase.” _

She’s not _ here_. His bar mitzvah was _ four years ago_. He can’t see her, this isn’t that kind of hallucination, but it feels fucking _ real_. He remembers them stepping on each other’s feet, he remembers taking turns spinning each other, he remembers knocking his forehead against Gert’s when he’d ducked to let her spin him. He remembers worrying that he’d really _ made _ her dance, and apologizing for it, and the way she’d bit her lip when she’d said _ no, it was fun_, and kissed his cheek.

She’d ignored his texts for two days after that, and he’d ignored that she’d ignored him, because they’ve always been stupid, but none of that _ matters _ now he’s gone and ruined it all and gotten himself trapped in preteen purgatory.

He sinks into a chair and closes his eyes. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s been there when he hears the click-clack of heels behind him. He freezes.

Can you get hurt in preteen purgatory? Or mindwiped? Or—

“Chase, honey?”

He stands up quickly, whipping around so fast he knocks over his chair. 

He doesn’t really remember what his mom wore to his bar mitzvah, but he’s pretty sure it wasn’t a Hillary Clinton power suit. He’s also pretty sure she didn’t accessorize with a fucking sci-fi _ laser gun_.

This is real.


	2. the grinding scream of death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chase, Gert, and Karolina, get some long-awaited information from their parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say I bullshit a LOT of physics and genetics in this chapter, and I am the opposite of a person who knows anything about either of those things! Just........comics!

Chase knows that he’s not always the smartest guy in the room, but he’s pretty sure there’s not a reasonable explanation for any of this. If he were Gert or Alex, he’d probably be able to logic it out, and he’s _ trying_. He tries to focus on where he and his mom were before (at home, by the pool), and where they are now (ghost bar mitzvah), but he can’t get from A to B.

But he’s not by himself, at least. His _ mom_ ishere, and he can hear the inner Gert-and-Alex he’s channeling yell at him for this after everything, but his inner-Chase voice is kind of glad there’s an adult who maybe had an explanation, whether he can trust her or not. 

“Mom? How are you...you’re really here?”

Janet nods, smiling tersely. Something in him shifts in relief, or anxiety, or both. His thoughts realign, and he’s remembering what happened at the pool again, and something about Karolina’s inhibitor bracelet, maybe?

“Yes, I am. And now that you know that, we don’t have much time.”

Chase frowns. “What’s that supposed to—”

He doesn’t get the words out before the ballroom begins to shift and spin. His mom is pulled away from him as she yells his name. He shifts and spins too, until he’s dizzy, until his mom is too far away to hear, until he finds himself slipping, _ slipping _ into the dark.

Chase is in his room in the hostel. His old room. And his mind is sort of blank, in a way that feels like deja vu. He can’t remember how he got here, but something’s _ wrong_. There’s a knot in his stomach and his skin is crawling. Everything’s _ quiet _ and it’s _ wrong_.

He scrambles outside, and it’s even worse, because there are his friends, dead or almost, with the hostel even more ruined around them. 

Molly looks so small and tired when she manages a quiet _ save Gert_.

And Gert’s there, surrounded by their parents, terrified, screaming _ his name_, which is awful and terrible because, he remembers, she hates him, even if his mind is too foggy to think about why. He screams at their parents, and he runs down the stairs as they lower her into the box teasingly slow—

And then his mom is screaming his name.

It startles him, throws him back a few stumbling inches, and he notices the whole world is slowing down. The other parents are moving in slow motion, and Gert is almost frozen, staring at him wide-eyed and terrified.

“Chase,” his mother says again, and she’s stepping away, pulling the hood down on the red robe. “Chase, honey, this isn’t real. Like before, at your bar mitzvah.”

She says it, and something clicks. His bar mitzvah and his mother in a power suit with a laser gun. It didn’t belong. Like his mom, here in the hostel, freezing Pride as they try to sacrifice Gert. 

“This isn’t real,” he says, slowly.

Janet smiles reassuringly. “Yes. That’s good, you’re doing so well, sweetheart. I need you to focus, okay?

He frowns, glancing at Gert. “Focus?”

She walks over, placing her palms against his cheek, forcing him to look at her. “Think about something that makes you feel calm,” she says, firmly. “Not happy. Just calm.”

“Calm?” he turns as much as he can, trying to keep Gert in his line of sight. His mom sighs.

“Chase. Not Gert, okay? Something neutral.”

“I can’t—”

“Chase. If you want to get Gert out of this, you need to think of something calm.”

He tries to focus on her words, clings to _ get Gert out of this_, and closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. After a moment, his mom makes a small noise of surprise, and he opens his eyes to the Atlas Academy lacrosse field. No Gert, but no lacrosse team either, or Coach Alphona, or anyone but him and his mom. 

“Chase,” Janet frowns. “I said calm, not happy. You love lacrosse.”

Chase shrugs a little. “I mean, yeah. I do. And I guess it makes me happy when the team does well. But I don’t really have to think when I play lacrosse.”

He’s never really thought about it like that, but as soon as he says it, he knows it’s true. His mom makes a face he can’t really decipher, but it kind of looks like she’s sad. That’s not really important right now, though. He shakes his head, taking a deep breath.

“Mom, what’s going on? What _ was _ all of that?”

She bites her lip before sitting down on the bleachers, patting the spot next to her until he sits. 

“We’re at Atlas right now,” she says, softly, the way she used to when she’d help him with his homework—like she’s going to talk him through it, because she knows he can get the answer if he thinks about it the right way. “And before we were...was that where you kids were living?”

Chase shrugs. Whatever’s going on, his mom _ probably _ can’t help the rest of Pride find his friends from what she saw, but he’s not risking it. 

“And before that we were at my bar mitzvah, yeah,” he says instead, nodding. “None of this is real. And I guess it’s something to do with my emotions?”

His mom smiles, kind of proudly, and he hates the way his stomach lurches happily. He pushes it down, in case the scenery shifts again.

“Something like that,” she nods. “Do you remember your dad coming back with Karolina?” she asks, biting her lip.

As soon as she says it, he does. Vividly. He takes a deep breath and grips onto the bleacher to ground himself. “It wasn’t Dad,” he mumbles. “It was Jonah. Right?”

“Mmhm. I think he’s been using your dad’s body since we blew up his ship at the construction site.”

Chase takes a deep breath. “So Jonah’s the one that called me? Wait, is Dad _ dead_? Because when I saw him with the weapon plans earlier, that seemed like—”

“Chase, slow down,” she says, firmly. “I don’t think he’s dead, I think that explains why he’s been losing time. I don’t know who called you,” she says, quietly. “But for what it’s worth, your dad would be thrilled you came home, and—”

“Mom,” he says, tightly. “Don’t. Not right now, okay? Just tell me what’s going on.”

He’s not sure he’s ready to deal with the rest of it yet.

She nods, biting her lip. “We’re in what Jonah calls the healing algorithm, though as far as I can tell, it’s not actually healing so much as distracting our minds. He had your father in one, and as far as I can tell, it’s manipulating our brain chemistry.”

Chase nods, trying to follow along. “So you’re not really here?”

“I’m as here as you are,” she shrugs. “My consciousness is. As far as I can tell, he has you, me, and Karolina all under the same algorithm, and it’s not designed for that many people at once, so I was sort of able to manipulate it once I realized what was going on. I was able to find a sort of backdoor to get to you. “

“Like Inception?” he asks, and she laughs, nodding. “Is that why it’s shifting, too?”

“I think so. With Victor, it was just one scene, even though he was aware it was a simulation. For me, the moment I realized where I was, it shifted, and I had to start over. I think it’s responding to a shift in the brain chemistry. You panicked, acutely, when you saw me and knew something was going on, so your brain shifted into a scene of fear to distract you. Thinking of something neutral seems to trick it into finding a baseline.”

“So Jonah’s not, like. Actively torturing us.”

“He probably could,” she says, wryly. “He can manipulate it from the outside. I just don’t think he is. I’m not sure what his endgame is, but I’m pretty sure we were just in the way.”

Chase shakes his head, trying to process it all. 

“That’s some real sci-fi shit,” he says, automatically. 

Janet raises her eyebrows and Chase is ready to apologize for language on instinct, but then she snorts.

“Yeah. Yeah, it kind of is.”

“So, what’s with the laser gun?”

“Part of my neutral thoughts. Let’s just say that when my dreamscape shifted, I had to fight a few demons,” she says, wryly, and Chase gets a vivid image—memory—of his dad, angry and redfaced, and then his mom, shaking on her heels but shooting anyway. He shakes it off, because it doesn’t seem like they have time to deal with that right now. 

“So what do we do? How do we get out? If you can get to me, we can get to Karolina, right?”

“We can find a backdoor to her, the same way I did with you,” she says, nodding. “I have some ideas on how to manipulate the algorithm into shutting down and letting us out. But I’ll need help, from both of you. I can’t get us all out unless I can access your consciousness.”

Chase bites his lip. Last time he saw Karolina, she definitely wasn’t his biggest fan, and he’s pretty sure showing up in her mind to ask if his mom can root around isn’t going to help.

But he has to do something.

“Okay,” he said, quietly. “Show me how to get to her. I’ll talk to her. Alone.”

Dale rents a straight-from-a-slasher-flick cabin in the middle of fucking nowhere with a shit ton of cash he has apparently stashed in the glove compartment. There’s one window-less bedroom, which he gave to her and Lace after moving the couch he’d be sleeping on in front of the doorway. The toilet barely flushes. The camp stove in the kitchen doesn’t work.

Why is why her absolute lunatic of a father has dragged her outside in front of a _ campfire _ to roast hot dogs like he’s chaperoning a Girl Scout Camporee.

"Let me get this straight. You kidnapped me, and we're on the run from your entire murder club, and you took the time to buy tofu dogs?"

Dale looks up, frowning. "The beef ones upset your stomach."

Gert groans, and attempts to raise her hands in frustration, but her absolute _ maniac _ of a father has her _ literally tied to her chair_, so that's a no-go.

"You know this is absolutely insane, right?" she snaps. "I don't care that you know what food I like, or that you brought my meds on the lam with us, or that you only _ temporarily _ poisoned my boyfriend instead of trying to kill my dinosaur. You can't do the things you've done and pretend tofu dogs make you a good dad!" 

Dale sets down his skewer and looks at her.

"Gert," he says, tightly, and she feels _ five years old _ when she hears that voice, and suddenly she misses him. She misses being five years old, she misses having real parents who are frustrated and stern and loving and embarrassing. She misses everything she thought her dad was _ so much_. 

He steadies himself and takes a breath. "I don't expect you to understand any of this. But I need you to trust me, because despite all of the awful things I know I've done, I'm your father. Everything I've ever done has been with you in mind, Gert."

And just like that, she's over it. 

"Do _ not _ use me as a scapegoat," she snaps. "And you're not even my real dad."

Dale looks like he got punched in the stomach, and honestly? It feels good. She probably shouldn't be proud of that, and there’s a nagging part of her that would _ never _ want Molly to hear her talk like this lecturing herself on the lack of biological importance in the construct of _ real family. _ But it feels earned and self-righteous and _ good_.

"What? What are you talking about? Of course I'm your dad."

Gert rolls her eyes. "I've known about the sperm donor since I was 7, Dale. Stacey told me."

Dale blinks, staring at her with a stunned expression for a moment. "Stacey...told you we used a sperm donor,” he repeats, slowly. 

She shrugs as much as she can in her position. "I asked her if I was adopted like Molly, so she told me. I mean, I was going to figure it out eventually. I don’t look like you guys, I'm not even white."

Dale stares for a long moment, finally shaking his head. He sets his jaw determinedly.

"Stacey lied," he says, shortly. "Well, she didn't tell you the whole truth. Neither one of us are your biological parents, Gert."

Gert stares.

"What?" she shakes her head. "No, you’re lying, I've seen pictures of Stacey pregnant. What, do I have an older sibling you guys sacrificed?"

Dale stiffens. "We used IVF. Sort of."

"Sort of?" Gert wrinkles her noise. "How do you sort of use IVF?"

He takes a deep breath. "You have to understand—"

"No, I don't."

"Okay, fine you don't," he rolls his eyes. "But could you at least let me explain?"

Gert shrugs, glaring. "Not like I can go anywhere."

"Your mother and I had been trying to have a child for awhile," he says, quietly. "This was before we had any investors in the lab, just a massive amount of student loans. Not that we didn’t start from a place of privilege, of course—”

“Oh my _ God_, Dale,” she groans. “Just tell me.”

Dale runs a hand through his hair nervously.

“We'd tried a few options, but we were stretching our finances to their limit. And then we met Jonah."

Gert feels like she's just had a gallon of ice cold water poured over her head. "_What_?"

Dale grimaces. "I told you there was more to it," he murmurs. "He offered us funding, and an investor contract with the Minorus, right when Wizard Computers was starting to take off."

"So, you agreed to murder kids so you could afford fertility treatments? You realize that’s, like, dripping with irony, right?”

"No, Gert," he sighs. "We joined Pride because Jonah offered us _ you _. Well. Your genetic material. Though I’ll admit the point about the irony still stands.”

"What," she says, slowly, "The fuck."

“I know it’s a lot to take in, honey, and what we’ve always told Molly applies here, too—”

“You _ lied _to Molly her entire life,” she snaps. “And you’ve been lying to me, because telling the _ truth _ involves telling us all the shitty, fucked up, awful things you’ve done and used us to justify. Because you’re a coward, Dale. You’re a coward, and you’re an awful person.”

Dale closes his eyes. The tofu dog’s starting to burn a little. She takes a deep breath. 

“Am I an alien?” she asks. “If you got my genetic material or whatever from Jonah, am I like Karolina?”

Dale looks at her, almost startled, yanking the ruined tofu out of the fire. 

“No,” he says, quietly. “Well, we’ve never looked at Karolina’s DNA, but we have examined Jonah’s and it’s completely structurally different to yours.”

Gert swallows back the bitter image of her parents deconstructing her genetic code like one of their research projects. 

“Okay,” she says. “Then what’s mine like? You said genetic material, what does that mean?”

“Well, we’re all made up of genetic structures called DNA and RNA—”

“I don’t need a 9th grade biology lesson, Dale, just tell me where I came from!”

“We combined DNA from a sperm donor with what Jonah gave us,” he sighs. “He said it came from a different dimension. He called it the Utopian Parallel.”

“A different....dimension,” she says, slowly.

“As far as we can tell, it’s really very similar to our own DNA,” he shrugged. “With a few small structural changes that may have made the fertility difference. We combined it so your mother’s body would recognize the embryo as it would with any other pregnancy. The way the material from both dimensions combine created something fairly unique, actually, and—”

He rambles on about chromosomes and genetic markers and she thinks she hears _ two mothers _ in there somewhere, but she’s not processing any of it, not really. 

“—when we were replicating dinosaur DNA to create Old Lace—”

“Wait,” she says, looking up. “So, you’re saying you played around with my genetic code to play Jurassic Park?”

“No, no!” he shakes his head. “The way she understands and reacts to humans, Gert, we were trying to create _ that _ inside existing DNA. We looked at your DNA because—”

“Because I’m something else,” she says tightly. “Because I’m not from wherever Jonah scavenged genes, or from here, I’m something else. And so is Old Lace, right?”

“Gert—”

“You created a _ person_, Dale. I’m a person. And Old Lace is her own autonomous being. I don’t care what deal with the extraterrestrial devil you made to _ create _ us, but we’re not science experiments anymore.”

“You have to understand how much we _ wanted _ you, Gert,” he says. His voice sounds achingly sad and desperate and imploring, and it claws at her skin. She thought she knew all the ways people could disappoint her, but it turns out, that’s a bottomless pit.

“I already told you,” she says, keeping her voice steady and emotionless and cold, because he doesn’t deserve to know how much this hurts. “I don’t have to understand anything.”

When Karolina wakes up, it’s to a solid, heavy feeling in her limbs she hadn’t realized she’d been missing. Her back aches and her skin tingles and prickles like the blood is rushing back to her finger and toes. Her eyelids feel nearly glued shut, but she forces them open anyway.

Chase’s dad is standing over her, leaning back on his heels, hands tucked in the pockets of his slacks. 

“Good morning, Karolina,” he says, giving her a wide, lazy grin that she realizes, with a startling jolt in the pit of her stomach, she recognizes.

“Dad?” she asks, quietly, before she has enough of her bearings to call him Jonah or Asshole or anything she probably should be calling him instead. He nods.

“Good girl. I was wondering how much you’d remember.”

She inhales as deeply as she can, thinking of running in the woods and high-powered weapons and power inhibitors.

“I remember a lot,” she says, tightly. “What am I doing here? What do you want?”

He presses his lips into a thin smirk, sitting on the edge of the bed. “To tell you a story.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what it’s like on whatever planet you come from, but here, I’m a little too old for bedtime stories. Also, you’re wearing my friend’s dad’s face, so there’s an extra level of creepy here.”

This time, when Jonah-Victor grins, he shows teeth.

“Is he still your friend? Good. That’ll come in handy later,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re going to listen to this one. It’s important for your future, Karolina. Our future.”

“You’re so sure I still want a future with you?”

He makes a non-committal noise and waves her off. “How do you start your fairytales here? Once upon a time, isn’t it?”

She shrugs.

“Once upon a time,” he says, watching her steadily. “There was a planet, many stars from here, called Majesdane. My people, _ your _ people, the Gibborim, have ruled Majesdane comfortably for millenia, and have faced rebellion from a shape-shifting race called the Xartan for nearly as long.”

“Xartan,” she echoes. “Like Xavin.”

Jonah makes a face. “You’ve met Xavin, have you? My apologies.”

Karolina raises her eyebrows. “They called me their betrothed. They said there was a prophecy.”

She stumbles a little on the word, and she hopes he doesn’t notice, but she can’t think about Xavin’s prophecy without thinking about the look on Nico’s face.

“Ah. Yes, the prophecy,” he says, nodding. “That’s important here, too. Though the Xartan have distorted it into a mere fairytale. You see, the Xartan waged war on Majesdane for many, many years, violently destroying our planet. When we landed here, we were fleeing total destruction.”

Karolina frowns. She’s only sort of following this, but she’s pretty sure if Gert were here, she’d be ranting about history being written from the side of the colonizer. 

“But there has always been hope,” he continues. “A prophecy about a child of both Majesdane and a far off land, leading us home. I believed that was you, and I still do. But I no longer believe the prophecy is leading us back to a planet long destroyed, but to where we already are.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t....I’m not following.”

Jonah smiles, softly. “We’re going to rebuild the Earth, Karolina. Start from scratch. Rebuild what once rightfully belonged to us here, on your planet.”

Karolina stares.

“You’re asking me to help you wipe out the planet?”

“Not the entire thing,” he says, reasonably. “I’m willing to make deals. With your friends, your girlfriend, though that one I’d need to ask a fairly high price, given that she tried to murder me.”

It’s weird, Karolina hasn’t really_ noticed _ not having her powers up until this point, though it makes sense that Jonah would hide inhibitors in wherever they are. But the second he mentions Nico, she feels something unmistakably powerful spark in her veins. She tries to push it down, because she can’t see it helping either of them right now.

“I can’t...No. You know I can’t do that. That’s insane.”

“Karolina, dear, I hope you’ll join us, willingly. But please understand that I am not asking you anything. It’ll be a matter of time. And the more _ time_, the more energy we’ll need.”

She frowns. “Energy?”

Jonah grins, shifting her up, spinning her gently on her cot to look out of the alcove. She recognizes where they are now, kind of. She’s only been here a few times, when she was little and playing hide-and-seek with her friends, but this is definitely Victor Stein’s lab. 

And right in the center of it sit three tubes, like the one they’d seen him in at the church. One is empty. The other two contain Janet and Chase Stein. 

Jonah picks up a syringe, tapping it before grabbing her arm.

“Like one of your granola bars,” he says, simply. “A snack.”

He sticks the syringe into her arm, and the world, once again, goes black.


End file.
